So pal Tom F. popped by the store the other day to drop off some boxes of goodies…”hey, some of this stuff may pop up on my site” I said to him, and so not to make a liar out of me, here we are:

This is a folder of promotional material for Comico, from 1985, and if one were to open it, like, perhaps, one did in preparation for one to put together a blog post about it:

…you would see the vast array of fliers and posters and other hoohar for the discerning retailer to peruse. On the left there you can see one of the in-store “Coming This Month from Comico” handouts and the two posters, and on the right are the individual fliers for each of the series being pushed by this particular promotion, as well as a couple of letters with a brief history of the company and a detailed list of what promotional items and opportunities exist for their line of books.

Here is the included Mage poster, which brought back some nostalgic memories of seeing one of these on the wall of Ye Olde Funniebook Store:

And here is the flier for Mage, appropriately colored given the whole “Magic is Green” tagline for the series:

The other poster is for Robotech Masters, which…well, I never got into Robotech, sorry, but I’m sure someone out there will think this is neat:

And here’s a detail from the Elementals flier which amused me for no good reason I can name:

This was back in the days when Elementals was good…a very long time ago. That was one of the early “hot” indies, and those early issues used to go for a bit of cash. The Elementals first appeared in Justice Machine Annual #1, which was the only issue of Justice Machine that we ever seemed to sell.

And you can see in the pic of the open folder up there a flier for Next Man, which is apparently coming back, according to that press release. And there’s a Next Man site, which I can’t get to load at the moment.

Anyway, that was today’s installment of “Let’s Look at a Promo Package for a Defunct Publisher,” courtesy of pal Tom F. Somewhere around here I also have one for First Comics…remind me to dig that out sometime.

• • •

In other news:

As I write this, word is spreading that legendary comics artist Al Williamson has passed away. You’ll likely hear a lot about his work in the next few days, but I wanted to point out how much I loved his work for EC Comics, and how interesting it was when he inked Curt Swan on Superman stories for a brief period in the ’80s. It was a bit odd-looking, and not as sleek as you’d expect from your average Superman comic, but it sure was pretty. Also, someday, I will own his adaptation of the ’80s Flash Gordon movie, because there is no way that could be anything less than awesome.

If you want the Williamson Flash Gordon movie adaptation, get the AL WILLIAMSON’S FLASH GORDON: A LIFELONG VISION OF THE HEROIC book that Flesk published last year. Full movie adaptation at a large size, plus Williamson’s Flash Gordon work from the 1960s and 1990s, lots of extras, unused pages and sketches, most of it reprinted from the original art.

this reminds me of the ordering packet that retailers got prior to Previews becoming the magalog that everyone knows today. You could tell the professionalism of the material by the quality level of the promo material (most of the time).

Was there ever a Justice Machine issue published other than the annual? I bought the annual at a convention after hearing the Texas Comics people talk up how great things were going to be and never heard another thing about it.

I’ll echo what Bob said about the Flesk Flash Gordon book. I got the softcover last year, and it is an amazing book worth every penny. And Mike, the movie adaptation *IS* awesome.

To John McKeon – Yes, there were Justice Machine comics both prior to and after that ill-fated Annual. However, I don’t think there was ever another publication by Texas Comics. They picked up the series for that book and then vanished. The Justice Machine books I used to own were published by Comico. They were a crossover with the Elementals, no less!